Stealing is stealing
I was reading on Anime News Network about piracy and scanlations and all that crap and it got me thinking about some things in relation to the anime/manga industry. There are some people who like to get on their high horse and moralize about how people who are stealing from the industry are ruining it and doing Something Very Bad. I'm not saying whether I agree or disagree with them, mostly because I don't really care. I don't care if there is a translation industry because I read manga in Japanese and the manga industry in Japan isn't going anywhere.
But here's the problem I have: nobody is actually thinking about where this money is going. They just think that if you're paying someone for something that they "legally" own that makes it morally right. The main problem with this mentality is that the people who are producing the work aren't necessarily the ones who are really making the money here. The people who are creating the manga, the ones who are really responsible for producing something that we value, are not the ones who are necessarily profiting the most by those products. A lot of that money is going elsewhere, to people who may be promoting the work, people who aren't really doing anything at all other than acting as intermediaries, and even people who are doing jack shit but are basically leeches at whatever company they're working at (and some people in the last group might be the ones making the most money). If people really wanted to do what was "morally" right, then maybe the best thing to do would be to get rid of all the middle men, destroy the industry as it exists, and create a system whereby the people who are actually receiving the cash moneys are the legitimate producers of the work.
Now I may not have a solution for how this could be done at present, but I sure as hell am thinking about it. It would have to make enough money to be self-sustaining and pay the artists, but that's pretty much it. And I'm not saying we have to get rid of capitalist enterprise entirely, because as everyone who understands anything about the economics of manga/anime well knows, the money isn't in the manga and it's not in the anime, it's in the toys and accessories and all that other junk that's sold in conjunction with them.
It's just upsetting that many of the people who actually produce this stuff, the artists and writers who haven't created blockbuster hits, live in penury under severe stress from a system that makes money off of and exploits them. We fans could potentially start a revolution that results in us paying less but them making more. We'd just have to organize and come up with an economically viable plan.
Definitely going to put this on the list of things to R & D while I'm doing my PhD.
But here's the problem I have: nobody is actually thinking about where this money is going. They just think that if you're paying someone for something that they "legally" own that makes it morally right. The main problem with this mentality is that the people who are producing the work aren't necessarily the ones who are really making the money here. The people who are creating the manga, the ones who are really responsible for producing something that we value, are not the ones who are necessarily profiting the most by those products. A lot of that money is going elsewhere, to people who may be promoting the work, people who aren't really doing anything at all other than acting as intermediaries, and even people who are doing jack shit but are basically leeches at whatever company they're working at (and some people in the last group might be the ones making the most money). If people really wanted to do what was "morally" right, then maybe the best thing to do would be to get rid of all the middle men, destroy the industry as it exists, and create a system whereby the people who are actually receiving the cash moneys are the legitimate producers of the work.
Now I may not have a solution for how this could be done at present, but I sure as hell am thinking about it. It would have to make enough money to be self-sustaining and pay the artists, but that's pretty much it. And I'm not saying we have to get rid of capitalist enterprise entirely, because as everyone who understands anything about the economics of manga/anime well knows, the money isn't in the manga and it's not in the anime, it's in the toys and accessories and all that other junk that's sold in conjunction with them.
It's just upsetting that many of the people who actually produce this stuff, the artists and writers who haven't created blockbuster hits, live in penury under severe stress from a system that makes money off of and exploits them. We fans could potentially start a revolution that results in us paying less but them making more. We'd just have to organize and come up with an economically viable plan.
Definitely going to put this on the list of things to R & D while I'm doing my PhD.